Slip casting is an ancient art. Generally in this art, a ceramic material suspended in a vehicle is poured into a mold. The vehicle is drawn out of the casting slip and a consolidated casting is left behind in the mold. The mold is then removed from the consolidated casting and the consolidated casting processed to produce the final properties desired in the casting.
We believe we have developed a unique procedure for forming a consolidated casting in the mold and thereafter removing the mold without damaging the casting. This procedure is particularly useful if the casting to be formed is one which has a delicate shape or a complex surface configuration.
The process we teach herein is one which may be used to produce consolidated castings in which the surface shape is very sophisticated and/or highly complex. For example, we are able to manufacture rotors for gas turbine engines using this process. As is well known in the art, such rotors have blades extending from a hub portion, which blades are very complex in surface geometry. Such blade configurations are extremely expensive to manufacture if machined from a single, solid piece of material.
It is a principal object of our invention to provide a method for manufacturing slip cast articles of complex configuration. It is a further object of our invention to provide such a manufacturing method which is relatively easy to carry out but produces complex castings very economically.